Products
Webtrends Analytics 8.x
Webtrends Analytics 9.x
Cause
When “Page View Definitions” in the profile configuration are changed from “Any hit” to “Webtrends parameter (WT.dl)” the Average Visit Duration decreases and the number of visits increases.
Resolution
Visit duration is based on when the visitor enters the site (entry page hit) to when the last page of the visit is hit. The duration that the visitor views the last page is not included as this is usually something that cannot be measured. When a visitor leaves a site there is no measurable end point for the page view. The exception to this is when using event tracking to gather other types of hits and the last hit may not be a page hit. For example, when tracking off-site links the last hit may be a link click with a WT.dl value of 24. Refer to Tag Builder for a list of values used in the Webtrends unified event model and options for event tracking.
In “Page View Definitions” the setting “Webtrends parameter (WT.dl)” only uses page hits (WT.dl=0) to calculate the visit duration measurement. This will not use an off-site link or other non-WT.dl=0 hit in the visit duration measurement. This removes the view duration of a page, ending the visit with a click on an off-site link.
This may also change the number of visits if there is a non-page hit that fills the gap between page hits; the gap between hits for the same visitor is under 30 minutes when counting all hits but over 30 minutes when only using page hits.
When creating a new profile, “Webtrends parameter (WT.dl)” is recommended to meet industry standards for visit duration and for more consistent visit duration measurement. For measurements to match previous “Any hit” data use the setting “Custom parameter”, set the Parameter to WT.dl and the value to zero. The Custom parameter setting will use WT.dl=0 for page-based dimension measurement but continue to use non-WT.dl=0 hits when measuring visit duration.